Throwback, p.13
Throwback, page 13
Maybe there was a way Leila could know what had happened to him. He was a part of history now. If he was trapped in the attack, his name would be listed among the victims.
Her fingers felt icy cold as she tapped “Corey Fletcher World Trade Tower” into her search bar. She felt like throwing up as she tapped Enter. But his name wasn’t there. Which gave her about three nanoseconds of relief, until she realized the flaw in her logic. If he died, how would anyone know his name?
He didn’t work there, he was on no lists. Nobody would file a missing-persons report. He was a visitor from a different time.
She sat up and looked out her window, half expecting him to be walking up the street, whistling. In her mind he was eating a chocolate bar from the Mani Market on Columbus. It was his favorite thing to do.
The street was empty. But for the first time since entering the room, she noticed the lacquer box, still sitting on her desk.
Leila lifted it close, looking at the winter scene. The skaters looked so lifelike, so full of fun. They made her feel like she could just step in and join them. Maybe, if Corey survived and came home, he could teach her how to time travel back to this scene. Like a little tourist visit to the 1800s.
Now she felt tears pressing against her eyes. Was this what life was going to be like now? Always thinking about her best friend and knowing that he had gotten killed in the greatest disaster in American history?
Sadness and rage and heartache and frustration all raced around inside her brain, colliding against each other, exploding to bits. Her teeth were grinding so hard her jaw hurt. With a cry of helplessness, she drew the lacquer box back and threw it. It flew end over end toward the pile of Auntie Flora’s belongings by the door. With a loud crash, it smacked into the framed photo she had propped against the wall.
As the protective glass shattered into tiny shards, the box bounced back onto the floor. It left a big, ugly gash in the photo.
“Leila?” her mom cried out. She was in the hallway in an instant, pushing the door open to her room. “What the heck just happened?”
“An accident,” Leila said. “I got carried away . . . practicing choreography. Big gestures, small room, bad choice.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, I’m an idiot. But no scratches. I’ll clean it up. Really. You be sure to make your deadline.”
Her mom gave her a dubious look, then backed out. “Maybe you need a nap, Leila. You don’t sound like yourself.”
As the door shut, Leila crouched down by the photo. It was the 1914 gathering of the Knickerbockers, only now the heads of four members in the back row had been bashed in, replaced by a hole. She reached behind the image. The cardboard backing had been punctured, too. She pressed it in, but it would need a professional to restore it to its former glory. With a sigh, she shook loose as much of the glass as she could.
That was when she noticed the enormous white cat at the bottom right of the photo.
At first glance she’d thought it was a polar bear. But at this distance it was definitely alive and very feline. As she looked closer, she noticed the doglike snout, the piercing eyes.
“Catsquatch . . . ,” she murmured.
The resemblance was uncanny. Leila set the photo down against the wall again. She knew she had to get a broom and a dustpan, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the cat. It looked so . . . present. So alive and intelligent. Just like its modern-day version.
She stood and backed away, inadvertently kicking the box. As she bent down to pick it up, it still felt weirdly warm to the touch. Holding it in her hand, she examined the outside, turning the box 360 degrees. Up close, she could see the finely ornamented brass hasp that kept the box shut. It was an octagonal shape, with a round keypad in the center that showed the numbers 1 to 6 next to six small black buttons.
But Leila couldn’t keep her eyes from the photo. The white cat seemed to be growing brighter. For a moment Leila imagined that its paw was raised.
No. Her imagination was playing tricks. She was thinking about the real Catsquatch, earlier that day. The way it had followed her and Rachel, like it had something important to say. The way it had raised its paw and tapped it down repeatedly on the sidewalk like a horse in a circus.
Four . . . three . . . five . . . two . . .
Leila felt the blood flush from her veins. She sat on the bed, clutching the box, glancing at the photo.
What if it was trying to say something?
The idea seemed ridiculous. Impossible.
But so did time travel.
Her fingers shaking, she pressed the buttons in order. Four. Three. Five. Two.
The hasp snapped open. Placing her hand on the lid, Leila opened it carefully and looked inside.
24
Corey helped Quinn down into the trench. The tough Wyoming cowboy was in tears as he landed on the dirt floor. Above them, the fallen ooga-ooga boy’s boots jutted out over the rim of the wall. “I—I didn’t mean to do that,” Quinn said.
“You saved our lives,” Corey replied.
All along the Gash, people were scrabbling up various ladders to the top, trying to peek over to see the body. “He got Ratboy . . . ,” someone called out breathlessly.
“Get outta here,” another voice answered.
A long, low whistle. “There’s gonna be blood for that.”
Corey felt a poke in his back and spun around to see the man who had handed him the empty bottle. “Take this,” he said, thrusting a lit kerosene lamp toward him. “Name’s Okun. Wally Okun. Head downtown, kid. You and your friend get out of the neighborhood. You heard the siren, right? Well, notice the cops ain’t here yet? Surprise, surprise, they’re always slow when it comes to protecting the Gash. Lots of noise but no action. They’d rather see us kill each other off. So this gives you some time, but not enough for tea and crumpets, if you catch my drift. If they see you, you’re outta luck. And that’s the least of your problems.”
Quinn was gazing upward, shaking his head in shock. “I killed a man.”
“That’s right, kid,” Okun said, “but I saw it. It was self-defense. He woulda killed you without blinking an eye.”
“They’ll catch me,” Quinn went on, “and they’ll send me home. That can’t happen. I can’t go home. . . .”
“We have to go, Quinn.” Corey put a hand on his shoulder, then turned to the kind stranger. “Thanks, Mr. Okun. How will I get the lamp back to you?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Okun’s face was taut with urgency. His features were sunken and dirty, but his back was straight and he stood close to seven feet tall. “Do exactly as I say. Walk fast. Anyone tries to bother you along the way, tell them the Commander sent you. Everybody respects me down here. Climb out of here at Varick Street and walk east. Lay low for the night in some rooming house in the Bowery, where you don’t have to give a name. By tomorrow everything will be hunky-dory.”
Behind him a group of about a dozen had formed. They were muttering amens and you bets.
One of the Gash people who had climbed up to the surface was now coming back down. “Hey, cowboy, the guy you slit—he’s still breathing. I’d get outta here pronto if I was you.”
Quinn looked relieved, but the small crowd did something Corey hadn’t expected. They burst into catcalls and nasty sound effects.
“Shoulda been offed . . .”
“Woulda served him right . . .”
“Animals . . .”
“We don’t like the gangs,” Okun explained, talking fast. “Things is bad enough down here with the rummies and rats, but we try to keep peaceful. We watch out for our own and know each other’s business. Like family. We ain’t angels, but we don’t stab and shoot. To them gangs, human life don’t mean nothing.”
Corey glanced around, hoping to see the faces of the two drunken guys he’d first met in the Gash, but it was hard to make out features in the darkness. “Help me, Mr. Okun, before we go. I fell in here myself this afternoon. When I woke up, my money and some personal stuff were gone from my pocket. We went to Haak’s Pawnshop—”
“Filcher take you there?” Okun broke in.
“How did you know?” Corey said.
“The snake,” Okun spat, shaking his head. “Those two got a racket, Filcher and Haak. Filcher pays guys to fleece the unconscious souls down here—of which there are many—and then they fork over the goods to him for payment. Sometimes they double-cross him and pawn the goods to Haak instead—but Filcher has his ways of getting his cut.”
“We know,” Corey said. “Hey, do you guys know anybody named Hans and Benny-boy?”
Okun looked over his shoulder. A mob of curious Gash people had gathered behind him. “You ain’t got time for chitchat—”
“We heard they were the ones who took my stuff,” Corey barreled on.
“Yeah? Well, them two both died months ago. Whoever told you that was their names—they was lying.” Okun turned and called into the crowd: “Any of youse seen who fleeced this nice kid?”
A murmur went through the crowd. After a moment voices began piping up:
“Coulda been Knuckles . . .”
“Knuckles is dead, ya numbskull . . .”
“No he ain’t!”
“Or Sammy the Clam . . .”
“Big Doogie . . .”
“Li’l Schmutzie . . .”
“How do we know this kid is tellin’ the truth?”
“He can go back to his mommy and daddy for money. . . .”
“Leave some of that money wit’ us!”
This was useless. In the distance, Corey could hear voices yodeling “Ooga-oooooga!” At the sound, the crowd fell into an instant silence.
Okun exhaled hard. He began pushing Corey and Quinn south. “That shout—it means the gang is calling for reinforcements. They’ll gather in the shadows and wait for the cops to come here. After the cops leave, they’ll move in. That’s how they work. Now go! And watch your backs.”
“What about you guys?” Quinn asked.
“They know enough not to bother us anymore,” Okun said with a cocky grin. “They’ll be looking for youse.”
Corey could hear a distant clopping of horse hooves. Without another word, he pointed the kerosene lamp downtown. The Gash people, little more than silhouettes, parted to the sides of the trench.
Quinn mouthed a quick thanks to Okun, and the two boys began to run.
Corey knew that warm air rose, but nothing proved it better than the top floor of a Bowery flophouse. After the six-floor climb, his entire body was covered with sweat that felt like hot glue.
The Bowery was a neighborhood that made the Gash seem upscale. The filth on the sidewalks crept up your ankles as you walked. Here, the down-and-outers slept on hot cement sidewalks, on cardboard boxes and piles of rags. They slept through the clatter of the elevated train. Soot-stained tenement buildings lined both sides of the street, most of them with hand-drawn Vacancy signs, usually followed by words like LOWEST RATES! or CHEAP!
That last part seemed about perfect for Corey’s and Quinn’s purposes.
The Better Ridgefield Hotel sounded promising. But half the steps were missing, the walls had fist-size holes, and the stink of body odor and rotten food seemed to be at war. As a distraction, Corey went over in his mind the list of names he’d heard in the Gash: Knuckles, Sammy the Clam, Big Doogie, Li’l Schmutzie. He would have to start gathering info on these guys as soon as he could. In the meantime he and Quinn needed to lie low from the ooga-ooga boys. This place was cheap enough, and it would just have to do.
As he pushed open the door to their room, Corey saw the advantages to sleeping on the sidewalk. The room smelled awful. The walls were grayish-black but looked suspiciously like they’d been painted white during the Jurassic era. It was just large enough for one ratty-looking bed and a rickety table with a metal chair. The only window faced an airshaft. Across the shaft was another window into another room, where a sunken-faced, bare-chested old man was asleep and snoring on a sofa.
“If this is the Better Ridgefield Hotel,” Corey said, “what’s the less-good Ridgefield Hotel like?”
“They told us it was the presidential suite!” As Quinn’s eyes scanned the squalid room, he looked agitated and jumpy. “I thought there might be two rooms. You know, one for each.”
“Some tough cowboy,” Corey said. “We’ll make the best of it. Tomorrow morning we head to the Hudson River, where I humiliate myself and you get a great job. Then we can live in style. After you get paid.” He flopped down onto the bed, which sent up a cloud of dust. A small squadron of insects scurried out from under the mattress and ran for the corner.
Quinn let out a noise between a shout and a squeak. “What in blazes are those?”
“Cockroaches,” Corey said, trying to sound braver than he felt.
“Do they bite?”
“Nah. They’re the official mascot of New York City.”
Quinn swallowed hard. “We could try sleeping in Central Park.”
“It’s like four miles away. And it has rats. Those do bite.” Corey felt his eyes closing. “Aren’t you tired?”
“No.” Quinn pulled the chair to the other side of the room and swung it around so it faced the door. “You go ahead. I—I don’t think it’s . . . safe for us both to be asleep at the same time.”
Corey yawned. The sheets seemed surprisingly clean, so he took off his sweaty shirt and fell back on the bed. “Dude, you don’t sound like yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were like a superhero with those thugs. You stood up to Satch. And the plank guy. Now you’re all jumpy.”
“Yeah. Well . . .”
Quinn’s face was turning red, and Corey felt a pang of guilt. What was the point of making fun of a guy who had just saved his life? “I guess you got kind of spooked, when you thought you killed that guy,” he said gently.
Quinn nodded. “I guess.”
“Sorry, Quinn, you’re my hero. Maybe you can lasso some cockroaches while I snooze. I’ll get up soon, and we can take”—Corey let out a big yawn—“tunes. . . .”
“Huh?”
“Turns,” Corey corrected himself.
As he drifted off to sleep, Quinn was sitting bolt upright in his chair, facing the other way. He was scribbling something in a small leather-bound book. Corey had no idea where he’d kept that hidden, or what he was writing.
Maybe cowboy poetry.
Corey smiled. To each his own.
25
Leila stared cautiously into the lacquer box. She pulled out thirteen foreign coins, two lockets, and four necklaces. A flip phone with a Post-it note that said Recycle this! A feather. A fountain pen. A nail file. A faded pin that said WOODSTOCK ’69. A framed selfie of Auntie Flora in a crowd, most likely Times Square, her “home away from home.” At the very bottom was a leather book.
That was all.
Leila sighed, placing the book back into the box. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Not after the last twenty-four hours, when her best friend had gotten stuck in time and a monster cat had revealed the secret combination to this box. Leila had been stoked for finding something crazy—maybe a smoldering gunpowder pellet or a tiny mouse king puffing on a tiny mouse pipe. But these were ordinary Auntie Flora–type souvenirs.
Leila took a deep breath. She was jittery. She was finding weirdness in normal things. Maybe the cat hadn’t tapped out a combination. Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe the lock would have yielded to any random combo. The box may have been made with a wood that absorbed warmth naturally. And the white cat in the old photo may just have been . . . a white cat in an old photo.
Rachel was texting her now. If anybody could be counted on to do that at the wrong time, it was Rachel. Leila quickly checked: it was a small flurry of apologies about the rehearsals, with lots of sad emojis. Leila was in no mood for that.
Instead of answering, she reached into the box and pulled out the leather book that lay at the bottom. It was a beautiful journal, bound by a loosely knotted silk ribbon and labeled with her aunt’s initials, AFS, Augusta Flora Sharp.
As Leila picked it up, the ribbon slipped loose. The leather cover was scorched in one spot but otherwise soft and nubbly, with a pattern of intertwined branches around the border. The rough-cut paper edges felt feathery. Claudia and Rachel thought Leila was crazy for loving the smell of books, but here in private she could yank open the journal and inhale. The pages didn’t seem like paper at all, more like linen, with fine grains and imperfections. She wanted to run her fingers over a page, but she felt funny looking at Auntie Flora’s private thoughts. Those were none of her business. So she turned to find a blank page.
Shreds of paper rained out of the book.
The very last three pages were scratched and cut up into strips that barely hung together. As if Auntie Flora had transformed into a toddler with a pair of scissors.
Leila flipped back a few pages, all ripped. Finally she reached the journal’s last entry. There, the handwriting was jagged and primitive looking, not at all like Auntie Flora’s neat, organized script:
don’t know if I can keep up this charade any longer. It’s not fair to dear, sweet, patient Lazslo. I have tried so hard. But Gus was right. It is possible to become addicted. It’s happened to me.
He said you will begin to NEED the experience. And no matter how many times they warn you of the consequences, you never think it will happen to you. But I feel it. And I don’t know how much longer I’ll be myself. . . .
Leila sat down on her bed. Her head felt light.
Auntie Flora was one of them. A time-hopper, or whatever you called them.
She’d always been theatrical and moody, but she’d become a little strange and distant lately. Now Leila knew why. Flora was OD’ing on time travel. Becoming addicted. Papou had warned Corey about that sort of thing.
